Here Comes the Open!

The CrossFit Games are to CrossFit what the SuperBowl is to football. To get there, you must get through Regionals; and even before that, you must get through the Open. The Open is the most inclusive competition in the world. It consists of a series of workouts that are released 1 at a time, and have to be completed within a given time, usually 1 week. The results are submitted to CrossFit HQ which tabulates and posts the results of the thousands of athletes competing. Last year it was 5 workouts over 5 weeks, but as with everything that is CrossFit, we won’t know the full details until it’s time. In 2011 they had 26,000 athletes compete, in 2012 it was 70,000. This year, they’re expecting triple digits!

Registration is online and usually inexpensive ($20). Athletes must complete each WOD at a registered affiliate (that’s us!) where their scores will then be validated. Athletes can see how they compare for each WOD on the world’s largest whiteboard via the CF Games website.

So, why should you compete? BECAUSE IT’S FUN! Roots will be doing each weekly WOD as part of our weekly programming anyway AND you could help qualify a Roots team! For each WOD, HQ will take the top-3 men’s and women’s scores from each affiliate and those totals will go towards an overall team total. If we score high enough, we could be sending a Roots team to Regionals!

And don’t think that you have to be a fire-breather to participate. This is an INCLUSIVE event and there are options for everyone. Typically, they don’t throwout WODs with tons of heavy and/or high skill movements in the early rounds. Last year, the first WOD was 7 minutes of burpees. See what I mean? In the coming weeks we’ll talk more about why you should participate and even let you hear stories of doubtfuls in years past who ended up having a blast. You’d pay more than that to participate in a marathon with no intention of winning, so why not?!